Ruined
by BohemianTwinkle
Summary: We live in a bordello darling, we’re already ruined...Nini remembers something. [slash]


This is the first in a while. My midnight Nini/Satine fic is finally seeing the light of day. Hope you all enjoy it.  
  
Dedication: I couldn't let anyone go on reading without letting the world know, this is for Janice, who let me know that Nini's eyes are actually blue (I fixed it up) and who is an angel on earth.  
  
**  
  
The night was almost over. The deep darkness of the deathly hours of the morning made only for sleeping had settled in. There was no moon in the sky and no stars to wish upon; only grey storm clouds.  
  
The Moulin had finally quietened and had become still for the night. The dancers had all left on their own business - occupied with a customer or finding somewhere to sleep for the night.  
  
The lone streetlamp shone an eerie orange glow over the Moulin, leaving it shadowed and dully lit up in places. The firelight of the lamp flooded like water into the cracks and crevices of the closed Moulin, revealing its naked walls and doorways, as well as the shadowed figure standing to the side.  
  
The figure stood hunched and relaxed in the comfort of the concealing shadows, sucking on a half burnt cigarette. Her skirts were ruffled about her legs from her most un-ladylike stance and the top buttons over her chest had come loose and fallen undone. Her light turquoise eyes encircled in eyeliner sparkled out of the darkness like rare opals as she held her cunning gaze over the form of the building she hunched against.  
  
'Funny,' she whispered to herself as she ran an idle hand over the red painted wall, 'How things change with the world,' she mused to herself, brushing her fingertips over the cracks in the wall, not caring if she caught a splinter.  
  
'From night to day you turn from the most desirable place on Earth to nothing but a crumbling building,' she went on speaking, 'Maybe one day you'll change all over again for good, do you know, it was almost this time all those bloody years ago that I keep remembering?' she questioned.  
  
She was questioning a wall but it didn't matter. The memory was going to be relived no matter what. The wall would be the only thing that would listen anyway.  
  
'We'd been arguing violently since the early evening, right here inside one of your dressing rooms,' she began the memory, addressing the wall like a human, 'I can't remember how we all of a sudden went silent and just stood there like stunned schoolgirls, facing one another at the lack of words,' she described the memory, her harsh cockney voice wheezing from the cigarette smoke. She rested her head against the wall and watched the clouds.  
  
'It took a while, but I was the first to open my mouth and spit something out again,' she droned, as the clouds opened up like stage curtains and she watched the memory replay itself for her.  
  
'I just love you,' she remembered herself saying, her voice was lowered and sincere, 'Nothing more, nothing less,' she added quickly with the edge of her voice coming back. She shrugged.  
  
'I'm bloody crazy, but I do,' she said as an afterthought.  
  
'You weren't supposed to,' the voice of the other character in the memory finally spoke. The voice was quick and tinged with ice.  
  
'I know,' she said, 'Couldn't help it could I? It was out of my control,' she added a little defensively.  
  
'Funny that,' the other character mused idly bordering on sarcasm and real thought, 'Important things never seem to be in our control,'  
  
'It doesn't make you laugh,' she pointed out as the other character picked up a glass half full of champagne.  
  
'But you do,' the character slurred through a sip.  
  
'I always could,'  
  
It was silent for another moment; the one with the champagne sipped from her glass absently and flopped down onto a lounge while the other wondered just what to do. The sun was beginning to creep over the windowsill, the candles had almost burnt away and the several bottles of champagne that were full at the beginning of the night were now mostly empty.  
  
'Don't just stand there, come and have a drink with me,' the champagne drinker said.  
  
The other did as told and walked towards the lounge, sitting down and taking her own glass of the beverage.  
  
'We're going to be stars, you know,' the drinker said confidently.  
  
'I don't know how, you'll ruin me with all this drinking,' the other replied lightheartedly.  
  
'We live in a bordello darling, we're already ruined,'  
  
'We've been here barely a month, we're still innocent,'  
  
'Innocence never lasts long here,' the drinker slurred gravely.  
  
The memory paused then, as a cloud drifted over and blurred the scene. She lifted her head from the wall, shrugging and raised an eyebrow as a reaction to what she'd seen, or remembered. She didn't like remembering herself as how she was. Foolish and naïve.  
  
She turned her head from the sky and looked in the face of the wall again. 'Right then, I saw how tarnished she had become and how frightened I was of losing her,' she explained to the wall, 'She was fixated on becoming the star of everything, she'd buried all her purity,' she said with a tinge of sadness as the moonshine lit up the wall again and the interfering cloud passed over and the memory continued.  
  
'It does if we hold onto it,' she was saying in reply. The drinker laughed carelessly.  
  
'Nini, years from now we'll hate each other and be so deep in the Underworld that we'll never get out,' the drinker said, tilting her head back to glance at the ceiling listlessly.  
  
'But Satine, I love you,'  
  
'No you don't,' was the reply, as the drinker stood up and began to wander aimlessly across the room, 'You just think you do for something to say,' she said over her shoulder, 'We're creatures of the underworld, we can't afford to love,' she recited, becoming the first person ever to say that to Nini.  
  
'Do you believe you'll never love?' came an answer of disbelief.  
  
'Yes,'  
  
The wind made the leaves crackle about the street, 'She was bloody wrong though wasn't she?' she exclaimed bitterly to the wall, 'Seems ironically unfair,' 


End file.
